Occult History

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Lecture 3

Stuttgart, 29th December 1910

CERTAIN
things that have been said in giving a brief glimpse into the occult
course of human evolution will have indicated to you that the
succession of incarnations as determined by the individual character
and development of human beings, is modified through the intervention
of spiritual forces from the higher Hierarchies. Reincarnation is by
no means such a simple process in the evolution of humanity as a certain
easy-going way of thinking likes to assume. It is, of course, a fact
that man incarnates again and again, that the innermost core of his
being appears over and over again in new incarnations; it is also true
that there is a causal connection between earlier and later lives. Moreover
there is the law of karma which gives expression to this causal connection.
But over and above all this there is something else which is essential
for understanding the historical course of the evolution of mankind.
The course of human evolution would have been quite different if nothing
except the causal connections between one incarnation and the next,
or between the earlier and the later incarnations of the human being
came into consideration. Other forces of great significance intervene
perpetually in human life, in every incarnation, to a greater or less
extent, and use the human being as an instrument. This applies particularly
in the case of leading personalities in history. Hence it follows that
purely individual karma is modified through the successive incarnations,
and this is what actually happens.

Limiting ourselves for the
time being to the Post-Atlantean period, we can speak of a law according
to which, in the epochs up to the present time, the influences of other
worlds are connected with man's individual karma A diagram is
the only means of indicating what form these influences take and how
they are related to the human individuality. Let us imagine (see diagram)
that the oval form in the middle represents the human ego, the kernel
of human nature. We now indicate the other members of man's being,
leaving aside for the moment the division of the soul into sentient
soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul. Here, then, schematically,
we have astral body, etheric body and physical body.

Because we are speaking
of Post-Atlantean evolution only, we will try to envisage, from the
many descriptions given, the essential elements in the future of man.
We are now living in the middle of the Post-Atlantean epoch —
in fact somewhat beyond the actual middle. lt is only necessary here
to recapitulate very briefly what has been said on other occasions: that
the Greco-Latin culture-epoch was the period of development paramountly
of the intellectual or mind-soul, and that our present period is that
of the development of the spiritual soul, the consciousness soul. The
Babylonian-Egyptian culture-epoch brought the sentient soul especially
to development; the preceding Persian epoch, the sentient body or astral
body; and the far-off Indian epoch, the etheric body. The adaptation
of the physical body to Post-Atlantean conditions of earthly existence
had already been achieved during the last epochs preceding the great
Atlantean catastrophe. So that when we now add to the diagram the other
members of man's being we can say: in the Post-Atlantean epoch
development proceeds during the ancient Indian period paramountly in
the etheric body, during the ancient Persian period in the astral body,
during the Egypto-Chaldean period in the sentient soul, during the Greco-Latin
period in the intellectual soul, and during our own period in the consciousness-soul
— that is to say, in the fifth member of man's being if we count
each of the soul-members separately. In a sixth culture-epoch man will
develop still further and his soul-nature will grow in a certain way
into Manas, the Spirit-Self; in a seventh period — the last Post-Atlantean
culture-epoch — man will grow into Life-Spirit or Buddhi; and
what has been able to grow into Atma will actually unfold only after
the great catastrophe by which the whole Post-Atlantean epoch will be
brought to an end.

Diagram 1Click image for large view

These things we know from the Lecture-Course on the apocalypse.
[see Note 16]
But we must now take account of the fact that during the first, the
ancient Indian epoch, man's development proceeded at a level below
the realm of the ego itself. The ancient Indian, pre-Vedic culture was
essentially an inspired culture, a culture which streamed as it were
into the human soul without that activity of the ego which we know to-day
as our life of thought and ideation. Since the Egyptian period, man
has had to be active in his ego, to turn his ego, via the senses, to
the surrounding world in order to receive its impressions; he has had
himself to participate actively in this further development. The ancient
Indian culture was acquired more passively, through surrender to what
streamed into men like inspiration. It will therefore be understandable
that this ancient Indian culture must be attributed to a kind of activity
different from that carried out by the human ego to-day; what is now
the activity of the ego had, so to speak, to be substituted in the ancient
Indian soul by higher Beings who came down into human beings and inspired
the human soul.

If we ask what it was
that was brought from outside into the human soul in that age, what
it was that was infused into the soul by Beings of the higher Hierarchies,
we can answer: it was the came as that which man will attain at some
future time as his own activity, when he has risen to the stage of Atma
or Spirit-Man. In other words, the human individuality in the future
will penetrate into Atma. This penetration will be achieved by the efforts
of the soul itself, the efforts of the central core of man's being.
And just as man himself will then be working in his own being,
so did Beings of the higher Hierarchies once work into and upon the
soul of the ancient Indian. To describe what took place in the etheric
bodies of ancient Indian souls, we can say: it was a dim, half-slumbering
ego-consciousness that was working there; Atma was working in the etheric
body. It may rightly be said that the soul of the ancient Indian was
an arena where superhuman work was performed; higher Beings were working
in the etheric body of the ancient Indian. And what was then woven into
the etheric body was an activity such as man himself will later an come
to achieve in the way indicated, when Atma works in the etheric body.

In ancient Persian culture,
Buddhi or Life-Spirit worked in the astral body, in the sentient body;
and in Babylonian-Chaldean? Egyptian culture, Manas or Spirit-Self worked
in the sentient soul. This latter culture, therefore, does not yet bear
the stamp of the ego working with full activity within the soul itself.
Although to a less extent than before, man was still a passive arena
for the working of Manas in the sentient soul. It was in the Greco-Latin
epoch that for the first time man entered into his own life of soul
with full activity. It is in the intellectual soul that the ego first
makes itself felt as an independent, inner member of man's being,
and we can therefore say: In Greek culture the ego actually works in
the ego, man as such works in man. In the course of these lectures we
shall see that the essential and unique character of Greek culture is
due to the fact that the ego is working in the ego.

But that culture-epoch
already lies some time behind us; and whereas in the pre-Grecian epoch
higher Beings came down in a certain way into the core of man's
nature and worked within it, in our time we have to fulfil an opposite
task. What we have developed and elaborated through our ego, what we
are in a position to take in from the impressions of the outer world
by dint of our own activity, we must, to begin with, be able to acquire
in a purely human way; but then we must not remain at the point where
the people of the Greco-Latin period came to a standstill, in that we
unfold the human only, the purely human as such. What we work out for
ourselves must be carried upwards md interwoven into what is still to
come; we must take the direction upwards, as it were, to what is to
come in later times: Manas or Spirit-Self. This, however, will not be
until the sixth culture-epoch. We are now living between the fourth
and the sixth epochs; the sixth gives promise that mankind will then
be in a position to bear upwards into higher regions of existence what
has been unfolded through the outer impressions received by the ego
through its senses. In the fifth culture-epoch we are in a position
only to set about giving a certain stamp to everything we acquire from
outer impressions and from working on them — a stamp which will
imbue everything with an impetus in the upward direction. In this respect
we are in truth living in a period of transition, and if you recall
what was said yesterday about the spiritual Power working in the Maid
of Orleans, you will see that there was already in Operation in her
something that takes the opposite direction to that of the influences
of higher Powers in the pre-Grecian epoch. When, let us say, a man belonging
to the ancient Persian culture received the influence of a super-sensible
Power which used him as its instrument, this Power worked into and took
effect in the very kernel of his being, and the man beheld and experienced
what this spiritual Being inspired into him. When the man of our time
enters into relation with such spiritual Powers, he can carry upwards
what he experiences in the physical world through the work of his ego
and the impressions it receives; he can give it all an upward orientation.
Hence in personalities such as the Maid of Orleans, the revelations,
the manifestations of those spiritual Powers who desire to speak to
her, take place, to be sure, in the sphere to which she reaches, but
something spreads itself in front of these revelations, without actually
detracting from their reality but giving them a particular form —
the form arising from what the ego experiences here in the physical
world. In other words: the Maid of Orleans had revelations, but she
could not behold them with the direct vision of the people of ancient
times; the mental pictures she had known in the physical world —
pictures of the Virgin Mary, of the Archangel Michael, arising from
her Christian conceptions — interposed themselves between her
own egohood and the objective spiritual Powers.

There we have an example
of how in spiritual matters we must distinguish between the objectivity
of a revelation and the objectivity of a content of consciousness. The
Maid of Orleans saw the Virgin Mary and the Archangel Michael in the
form of a certain picture. We must not conceive these pictures to be
the spiritual reality itself; nor must we ascribe direct objectivity
to the form they take. But to say that they are mere invention would
be nonsense. Revelations from the spiritual world did indeed come to
the Maid of Orleans, revelations which in the sixth culture-epoch —
and not und] then — man will be able to see in the form in which
they should be seen in the Post-Atlantean epoch. But although the Maid
of Orleans did not see this true form, it did come down towards her.
She brought the religious conceptions of her day to meet these revelations,
clothed them as it were in this imagery; her world of mental images
was evoked by the spiritual Power. The revelation is therefore to be
regarded as objective. Even if in our time someone can show that subjective
elements make their way into a revelation from the spiritual world,
even if we cannot regard the actual picture which the Person in question
forms for himself as objective, even if it is only a veil — we
must not for that reason assert that the objective revelations themselves
are veils. They are objective; but their content is conjured forth from
the soul. We must distinguish between the objectivity of that content
and the objectivity of the facts which come from the spiritual world.
— I am obliged to stress this point because in this domain mistakes
are made by those who acknowledge the reality of the spiritual world
as well as by our opponents — contrasting mistakes, it is true,
but of very common occurrence.

The Maid of Orleans is
therefore a personality already working entirely in the spirit of our
own epoch, when everything that we can produce on the foundation of
our outer impressions must be directed upward to the spiritual. But
what does this mean when we apply it to our own culture and civilisation?
It means this. — We may direct our attention, naïvely to begin
with, to our environment, but if we stop at that, if we have eyes for the
outer impressions only, then we are not fulfilling our bounden obligation.
We fulfil it only when we are conscious that these impressions must be
related to the spiritual Powers behind them. When we pursue science in
the manner of academic scholarship, we are not fulfilling our obligation.
We must regard everything that we can learn about the laws of natural
phenomena and the laws of the manifestations of the life of soul as
though it were a language which is to lead us to a revelation of the
divine-spiritual. When we are conscious that all physical, chemical,
biological, physiological, psychological laws must be related to something
spiritual that is revealing itself to us, then we are fulfilling our
obligation.

So it is in respect of
the sciences of our time and so it is in respect of art. The art we
characterise as that of ancient Greece which contemplated the human
being in a simpler, more direct way, always presenting the purely human,
the working of the ego with the ego in so far as the ego expresses itself
in the physical material — this art has had its day. In our time
the urge has arisen instinctively in personalities of great artistic
gifts, to present art as a kind of offering to the divine-spiritual
worlds; that is to say, to regard what is clothed in musical tones,
for example, as an interpretation of spiritual mysteries. In the history
of culture viewed from its occult aspect, Richard Wagner will one day
have to be so regarded, down to the very details of his art. He, particularly,
will have to be regarded as a representative man of our fifth culture-epoch,
as one who always felt the urge to express in what lived in him in the
form of musical tones, the impetus towards the spiritual world; who
looked upon a work of art as the outer language of the spiritual world.
In him the remains of ancient culture and the dawn of a new culture
face each other in sharp, even discordant, contrast in our time. Have
we not witnessed how the purely human arrangement of the tones, the
purely formal music which Richard Wagner wanted to surmount, was vigorously
defended by his opponents because they were incapable of feeling that
in him a new impulse was rising instinctively, like the dawn of a new
day?

I do not know whether
the majority of you are aware that for a long, long time Richard Wagner
has had the bitterest, most rabid critics and opponents. These critics
and opponents have had a certain guidance from the extremely ingenious
work an music produced in Vienna by Eduard Hanslick, the author of the
interesting little volume,
Vom Musikalisch-Schönen
(“On the Beautiful in Music.”).
[see Note 17]
I do not know whether you realise that with the publication of this
book the old was set up in opposition, as it were, to the rising of
a new dawn in history. Hanslick's book may become an historic
memorial of recent times. For what was his aim? He says: One cannot
make music in the way Richard Wagner makes it; that is not music at
all, for music there sets out with the intention of pointing to something
that lies outside music, to something super-sensible. Music is an “arabesque
in tones” — this was one of Hanslick's favourite expressions.
In other words, music is an arabesque-like interweaving of tones, and
the musical-aesthetic enjoyment of it may consist in purely human delight
in the way in which the tones resound in and after one another. Hanslick
says that Richard Wagner is no musician, that he simply does not understand
the essence of the musical, that the essence of music lies simply in
the architecture of the tone-material. — What can one say about
such a phenomenon? One can only say that Hanslick was pre-eminently
a reactionary, a straggler from the fourth culture-epoch. Then —
in that epoch — he would have been right; but what is right for
one epoch is not valid for the next. From Hanslick's standpoint
one can say: Richard Wagner is no musician. But then one would have
to add: that epoch is now over; we must accept what springs from it,
reconciling ourselves through the fact that music, as Hanslick understands
it, is expanding into something altogether new.

This clash between the
old and the new can be observed in many domains, particularly in our
own culture-epoch, and it is extraordinarily interesting to observe
it especially in the various branches of science. It would lead much
too far to attempt to show how there are reactionaries everywhere, as
well as those who are striving to produce out of the different sciences
what science ought to become: the expression of a divine-spiritual reality
behind the phenomena. Spiritual Science should be the basic element
which permeates the present time in order that the divine-spiritual
may more and more consciously be made the goal and focus of our labours.
Spiritual Science should everywhere awaken the impulses leading from
below upwards, summoning human souls to offer up what is gained through
external impressions for the sake of what is attained as we work our
way to the higher regions of Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man.

With this picture of human
history, of occult history, before us we shall understand that a soul
incarnated in the ancient Indian and then in the Persian epoch could
be inspired by an individual Being of the higher Hierarchies, but that
on passing into the Greco-Latin epoch this soul was alone with itself,
inasmuch as the ego was then working in the ego. Everything that in
the pre-Grecian age, in all the early cycles of Post-Atlantean civilisation,
appears as divine inspiration, as a revelation from above — and
this still holds good at the beginning of the Grecian epoch itself,
in the 9th, 10th and 11th centuries, B.C.
— everything that presents
itself to us as inspired culture into which the spiritual content flows
from outside, begins to be expressed more and more in the form of the
purely human and personal. And this comes to its strongest expression
in Greek culture. No previous age had seen — nor will any subsequent
age see again — such an expression of the outer man living in
the physical world as a self-based ego-being. The purely human and personal,
entirely self-contained, comes to light as historical reality in the
mode of life of the ancient Greek and in his creations. See how the
Greek sculptor has woven the element of the human and personal into
his figures of the gods! We can truly say that in a masterpiece of Greek
sculpture man stands before us wholly as personality — in so far
as it can be made recognisable in physical media. And if at the sight
of a Greek work of art we were not able to efface the thought that the
particular incarnation there expressed was preceded and will be followed
by others — if we were to imagine for a single moment that in
the form of an Apollo or a Zeus only one out of many incarnations is
represented — then we should not have the true feeling for these
masterpieces. In looking at them we must be able to forget that the
human being is incarnated in successive earthly lives. In Greek works
of art the whole personality has poured into the form of the single
personality. This was the hallmark of the life of the Greeks.

On the other hand, when
we go further back into the past, the forms become symbolic;
they indicate something that is not purely human, something that man
does not yet feel within his own self. In those times he could only
express in symbols what was coming in from divine-spiritual worlds.
Hence, in the archaic period, art was symbolic. — And when we
see the form in which art then makes its way to the people who were
destined to provide the material for our own, fifth culture-epoch —
think only of earlier German art — we find that there we have
to do, not with symbolism, nor with an expression of the purely human,
but with an inwardly deepened life of soul. We see there that
the soul cannot wholly permeate the outer human form. How could the
figures of Albrecht Dürer be characterised otherwise than by saying
that man's longing for the super-sensible world comes only to imperfect
expression — imperfect in the Greek sense — in the outer
configuration of the body Hence the deepening in the direction of the
life of soul as art progresses to further stages.

And now it will no longer
be incomprehensible to you that in the first of there lectures I said:
what was incarnated at an earlier time appears in the physical world
later on like a shadow-image. Beings of the higher Hierarchies streamed
into the individuality of a man belonging, let us say, to the early
Greek world, so that when we say “he was incarnated” we
must not see this self-contained being only, but standing behind him
an individuality of a higher Hierarchy. That is the picture we must
have of Alexander, and of Aristotle, in the Greco-Latin epoch. We follow
their individualities back into the past. From Alexander we must go
back to Gilgamish and say: in Gilgamish is the individuality who then,
projected as it were on the physical plane, appears as Alexander; behind
this individuality is a Fire-Spirit who uses him as an instrument. And
if we go hark from Aristotle, we see the powers of the old clairvoyance
working in Eabani, the friend of Gilgamish. Thus we see how both old
souls and young souls, with the old clairvoyance behind them, are placed
right out on the physical plane in the Greek epoch. This confronts us
vividly in the great woman mathematician Hypatia, in whom all the mathematical
and philosophical wisdom of her time lived as personal ability, as personal
erudition and wisdom. This was all embraced in the personality of Hypatia.
And we shall understand that this individuality had to be born as a
woman in order to bring together in a delicately concise form all that
she had earlier received from the Orphic Mysteries — in order
to impart to everything she had learnt from the Inspirers of those Mysteries
the stamp of a personal style.

We see, therefore, how
in the successive incarnations of human beings influences from the spiritual
world bring about modifications. I can do not more than intimate that
the individuality who incarnated as Hypatia, who brought with her the
wisdom of the Orphic Mysteries and gave personal expression to it, was
called upon in a subsequent incarnation to take the opposite path: to
bear all personal wisdom upwards again to the divine-spiritual. Hypatia
appeared at the turn of the 12th and 13th century as a significant,
universal spirit of later history, one who had a great influence upon
the knowledge that brings together science and philosophy. — Thus
we see how the Powers operating in the course of history penetrate into
the successive incarnations of particular individualities.

Observing the course of
history in this way we actually see a kind of descent from spiritual
heights until the Greco-Latin epoch, and then again an ascent. During
the Greek epoch — and it has continued, naturally, into our own
time — there is a gathering together of material to be acquired
purely from the physical plane and then. a carrying up of it again into
the spiritual world. For this, Spiritual Science should provide an impulse
— an impulse that was already alive instinctively in a personality
such as Hypatia, when she was incarnated again in the 13th century.

Now at this point, because
the Theosophical Society is in a certain respect a veritable arena of
misunderstandings, I want to emphasise that very many of these
misunderstandings are pure inventions. there are people who like to read
into what is said, for example, in the lectures given in our German
Movement, a certain opposition to the original revelations of the
Theosophical Movement in the modern age. I am therefore glad to take the
opportunity of pointing out that what is given here from genuine
Rosicrucian sources harmonises with mach that was originally given in the
Theosophical Movement. This is an opportune moment for referring to the
matter. It has been said by me, and enlarged upon quite independently of
traditions, that certain personalities in later history are, as it were,
shadow-images of earlier personalities portrayed in the myths, and behind
whom there stand Beings of the higher Hierarchies. Such things should not
be taken as though they contradicted those revelations which were given to
the Theosophical Society through H. P. Blavatsky. For then, through sheer
misunderstanding, one might very easily set oneself in opposition to the
good old teachings which were transmitted through that extraordinarily
useful instrument, H. P. Blavatsky. In connection with what we have been
studying here, let me quote a passage from her later writings, where she
refers to her earlier work, Isis Unveiled. The following passage will show
you that what is said about contradiction is really sheer invention —
there is no other way of putting it.

“But in addition
to reiterating the old, ever-present fact of Reincarnation and Karma
— not as taught by the Spiritualist, but as by the post Ancient
Science in the world — occultists must teach cyclic and evolutionary
reincarnation: that kind of rebirth, mysterious and still incomprehensible
to many who are ignorant of the world's history, which was cautiously
mentioned in Isis Unveiled. A general rebirth for every individual,
with interludes of Kama Loca and Devachan, and a cyclic, conscious
reincarnation with a grand and divine object for the few. Those great
characters who tower like giants in the history of mankind, like
Siddhartha Buddha and Jesus in the realm of the spiritual, and Alexander
the Macedonian and Napoleon the Great in the realm of physical conquest
are but the reflected images of human types which had existed —
not ten thousand years before, as cautiously put forward in
Isis Unveiled,
but for millions of consecutive years from the beginning
of the Manvantara. For — with the exception of the actual Avataras
— as above explained, they are the same unbroken Rays (Monads),
each respectively of its own special Parent-Flame, called Devas, Dhyan
Chohans or Dhyani Buddhas, or again Planetary Angels, etc. —
shining in aeonic eternity as their prototypes. It is in their image
that some men are born, and when some specific humanitarian object
is in view, the latter are hypostatically animated by their divine
prototypes, reproduced again and again by the mysterious Powers that
control and guide the destinies of our world.

“No more could
be said at the time when
Isis Unveiled
was written; hence
the statement was limited to the single remark that ‘There is
no prominent character in all the annals of sacred or profane history
whose prototype we cannot find in the half fictitious and half real
traditions of bygone religions and mythologies.’ As the star,
glimmering at an immeasurable distance above our heads in the boundless
immensity of the sky, reflects itself in the still waters of a Lake,
so does the imagery of men of the antediluvian ages reflect itself
in the periods we can embrace in a historical retrospect.”
[see Note 18]

As I said, I gladly seize
the opportunity of emphasising the agreement of what it is possible
to investigate at the present time with what was in a sense the original
revelation. You know that it is a principle here to keep faith in a
certain respect with the traditions of the Theosophical Movement; but
the essential point — and I lay special stress upon it —
is that nothing is repeated unless it has first been investigated and
checked. Where agreement between what is already known and something
from another source can be clearly shown, this should be done, for the
sake of continuity in the Theosophical Society and in fairness; but
nothing should simply be repeated without thorough examination. It is
part of the mission of our German Section of the Theosophical Movement
to bring our own, individual impulse into that Movement. But the examples
given can show you how groundless is the misconception which crops up
here and there that we always take a contrary view of things. We work
faithfully onwards without constantly reiterating the old dogmas; we
also test what is being presented to-day from other quarters. And we
stand for that which can be said, with the best occult conscience, an
the basis of the original occult investigations and the methods handed
down to us through our own sacred Rosicrucian traditions.

Now it is of the greatest
interest to show by the example of a particular personality how the
knowledge that was inspired into humanity under the influence of higher
Powers assumed in a man of the Greco-Latin epoch a character adapted
to the physical plane. Thus we can show how Eabani, in the incarnation
between the life as Eabani and the life as Aristotle, was able under
the influence of the ancient Mystery-teachings, into which forces streamed
from the super-sensible worlds, to imbibe the principles which in certain
Mystery-schools were essential to the further development of the human
soul. We will not speak of the particular characteristics of the different
Mystery-schools, but will direct our attention to one kind of Mystery-school
where, by the awakening of particular feelings, the soul developed to
the stage of being able to penetrate into the superphysical world. In
such Mystery-schools the feelings and impulses paramountly awakened
were those capable of eradicating every trace of egoism from the soul.
The soul came to realise that in truth it must always be egoistic when
incarnated in a physical body. The whole range, the whole import of
egoism an the physical plane were impressed into the soul; and such
a soul felt shattered to the depths at having to admit: “Hitherto
I have known only egoism; indeed, in the physical body I cannot be anything
else than an egoist.” Such a soul was leagues away from the commonplace
standpoint of people who are forever saying: “I want this, not
for myself, but for someone else.” To overcome egoism and to acquire
the urge towards the universal human and the cosmic is not such an easy
matter as many people imagine. For it must be preceded by the complete
elimination of every trace of egoism in the impulses of the soul. In
the Mysteries to which I am here referring, the soul had to learn to
feel pity and compassion for everything human, for everything cosmic
— compassion born from the overcoming of the physical plane. It
might then be hoped that such a soul would bring down again from the
higher worlds the true feeling of compassion for every living creature
and all existent beings.

But still another feeling
was to be developed — a feeling paramount among many others. If man
is to penetrate into the spiritual world, he must realise that everything
in that world differs from the things of the physical world. He who
is to confront the spiritual world face to face must stand before it
as before something completely unknown. Fear of the unknown is present
there as an actual danger. Therefore in these Mysteries, in order to
equip itself to banish all the feelings of fear, anxiety, terror and
horror known to man, the soul must first experience them to their very
depths. Then the pupil was armed for the ascent into the unknown purlieus
of the spiritual world. The soul of the pupil of these Mysteries had
to be so trained as to acquire an all-embracing, universal feeling of
compassion and of fearlessness. This was the ordeal to be endured by
every soul in those ancient Mysteries in which Eabani participated when
he appeared again in the incarnation lying between his lives as Eabani
and as Aristotle. This too he experienced. And it arose again in Aristotle
like a memory of earlier incarnations. He was able to define the essence
of tragedy precisely because out of such memories there arose in him
at the spectacle of Greek tragedy the realisation that here was an echo,
a reproduction carried outwards to the physical plane, of that Mystery-training
wherein the soul is purified through experiencing compassion and fear.
Thus the hero and the whole construction of a tragedy must present a
spectacle which on a milder level evokes in the audience compassion
with the face of the hero and fear in face of the destiny and terrible
death that beckon him. And so the experiences undergone by the soul
of the ancient mystic were woven into the succession of events in the
tragedy, into the plot and movement of the drama: purification, catharsis,
through fear and compassion, and like an echo, the man of the Greek
epoch was to experience this an the physical plane. What was formerly
a great educative principle was now be experienced through the medium
of aesthetic enjoyment. And when what Aristotle had learnt in earlier
incarnations rose up into his personal consciousness, he was the one
able to give the unique definition of tragedy which has become classic
and has had such an effect that it was still accepted by Lessing in
the 18th century, and through the 19th century played a role which caused
whole libraries to be written about it. As a matter of fact it would
be no great loss if the larger part of these volumes had been burnt;
for they were written in complete ignorance of what has just been said
— that here we have to do with a projection down into art of something
that belongs to the spiritual life. These authors had no inkling that
Aristotle was communicating an ancient secret of the Mysteries when
he said: A tragedy is a weaving together round a hero of successive
actions, which are able to arouse in the spectator the emotions of fear
and compassion in order that a catharsis may take place in his soul.
[see Note 19]

So we see that in what
a single personality wills and says there is shadowed forth something
that can be intelligible to us only when we look through the personality
to the Being who Stands behind him, to the Inspirer. Not until we look
at history in this way shall we be able to perceive what the personality,
as well as the super-personal Powers, signify in history, and how there
plays into the single incarnations something which Madame Blavatsky
calls the interplay between personal, individual incarnations and what
she means when she says: “But in addition to reiterating the old,
ever-present fact of Reincarnation and Karma, occultists must teach
cyclic and evolutionary reincarnation” ... and so on. She calls
this “conscious” reincarnation, because in the case of most
people to-day the ego is unconscious of successive incarnations, whereas
the spiritual Powers who work into these incarnations from above consciously
carry over their forces from one age into the other in accordance with
cyclic law.

This example of what was
revealed by Blavatsky in her earliest period, from out of the Rosicrucian
Mysteries, can be thoroughly checked and confirmed by independent investigations.
It will show you, however, that the easy-going habit of conceiving the
one incarnation merely as the result of a preceding one, must be essentially
modified. You will also realise that reincarnation is a far more complicated
nexus of facts than is generally supposed, and can be fully understood
only if the human being is seen in connection with a higher, superphysical
world which penetrates continually into our world. lt can be said that
in the intermediate period which we call the Greco-Latin epoch of culture,
men were given time to experience an aftermath of all that had been
laid into the soul from higher worlds through long series of incarnations,
to let it echo for once in the purely human ego. What was lived out
in the Greco-Latin world was like a human and personal expression of
endless memories laid at an earlier time into these same individualities
by higher worlds. Shall we then wonder that the greatest Spirits of
the Greek world became specially conscious of this? Looking into their
inner life they said to themselves: “There it is all streaming
forth, worlds are stretching there into our personality; but these experiences
are recollections of what was poured into us in earlier times from spiritual
worlds.” — Read how Plato interprets human knowledge as
the soul's recollection of its past experiences.
[see Note 20]
There you see how the works of a thinker such as Plato emanated from
a deep and true consciousness belonging to the fourth Post-Atlantean
epoch. Not until we are able to look with occult insight into the Spirit
of the several epochs shall we understand what a single utterance of
so outstanding a personality really signifies.